Chicago-based
Levy Premium Food Service informed state and local officials this week that it plans to lay off dozens of its employees who work at Fiserv Forum and for the Wisconsin Center District in downtown Milwaukee.
The employees that will be laid off include servers, bartenders, cooks, cashiers, supervisors and managers, according to WARN (Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification) notices filed with the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development.
Between Fiserv Forum and the Wisconsin Center, a total of 72 Levy employees will be laid off while another 77 employees will either face salary reductions, reduced hours, or both. These changes go into effect Aug. 1, 2020.
The notice indicates that 47 employees at
Fiserv Forum will be terminated while 25 positions will be eliminated at the
Wisconsin Center District, which includes the downtown convention center.
At the Wisconsin Center, "hourly team members may also experience a reduction of hours by 50% or more for 6 consecutive months until business levels resume," the WARN notice states. The effected hourly team members had primarily experienced reductions in scheduling since March 2020 and the effected salaried managers had been furloughed since May 2020.
“Given the continued unforeseen business circumstances created by recent sports league announcements that teams would not return to playing in front of fans for a number of months and/or government directives requiring longer term cancellation of large events due to the COVID-10 pandemic, additional notice of job loss was not practicable,” the company said in the notice.
Levy employees who work for the Wisconsin Center District and are being terminated are not represented by a labor organization. However, the employees who are experiencing a reduction in hours are represented by Workers United SEIU.
Levy employees who work at Fiserv Forum are not represented by a labor union, according to the notice.
Levy Premium Food Service did not respond to a request for comment.
